Tens of thousands of fake listings are added to Google Maps each month, redirecting users to fraudulent websites selling phony or overpriced services, or part of some referral scam.

This is the result of a study carried out by Google and University of California, San Diego researchers, who analyzed over 100,000 businesses marked as "abusive" and added to Google Maps between June 2014 and September 2015.

Researchers say that 74% of these abusive listings were for local businesses in the US and India, mainly in pockets around certain local hotspots, especially in large metropolitan areas such as New York, Chicago, Houston, or Los Angeles.